Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo held
off hard charging team mate Max Verstappen to win an incident filled 2016
Formula 1 Petronas Malaysia Grand Prix, after long time leader Lewis Hamilton
retired following a fiery Mercedes engine failure. In the second Mercedes Nico
Rosberg came through the pack after early drama to finish third and extend his
championship lead over Hamilton to 23 points.
That was despite Rosberg picking up
a 10-second time penalty for a mid-race clash with Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen,
who finished fourth. Williams’ Valtteri Bottas took fifth ahead of the Force
India’s of Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg, split by McLaren’s Fernando
Alonso, who came from the back row to take seventh. Team mate Jenson Button was
ninth in his 300th Grand Prix, as fellow Briton Jolyon Palmer took his first F1
point with 10th for Renault.
Ricciardo finally got his payback
for his Monaco loss earlier in the year, as he came through a brutal battle
with Verstappen which became one for victory after Hamilton’s Mercedes had
blown up when well ahead on the 41st lap. It was the fourth win of his F1
career. Bottas executed a fine one-stop strategy for Williams in a race
in which his team mate Felipe Massa started from the pit lane and finished 13th
after his car stalled at the start of the formation lap.
Carlos Sainz was 11th for Toro
Rosso ahead of Marcus Ericsson’s Sauber, Massa, brake-troubled Daniil Kvyat in
the second Toro Rosso, and the battling Manors of Pascal Wehrlein and Esteban
Ocon, the latter having picked up not one, but two five-second time penalties
for speeding in the pit lane. Romain Grosjean spun into the gravel and
retirement on Lap 9 after a suspected brake failure on his Haas coming into the
final turn, and team mate Esteban Gutierrez looked to have similar issues when
the left-front wheel flew from the Mexican’s car at speed on lap 42. Renault’s
Kevin Magnussen and Sauber’s Felipe Nasr were the other non-finishers.
No comments:
Post a Comment